


a collection of fragmented thoughts that were never written and never sent

by canimo



Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: (i know i know...), Angst, Inspired by Richard Siken, M/M, POV First Person, Post-Canon, for the letters prompt, theres some discussion of the war and wounds and stuff but nothing worse than what's shown in canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 17:40:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,533
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25490284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/canimo/pseuds/canimo
Summary: "I didn’t plan any of it, if that makes you feel better. I didn’t plan on liking you or loving you or leaving you. Every choice I made was not weighed out beforehand. Absolve yourself. You are not everything."Eight letters that might have been sent but never were.
Relationships: Merriell "Snafu" Shelton/Eugene Sledge
Comments: 9
Kudos: 18
Collections: Sledgefu Week 2020





	a collection of fragmented thoughts that were never written and never sent

**Author's Note:**

> letters prompt for sledgefu week 2020. quite angsty sorry abt that :/

_1_

I didn’t plan any of it, if that makes you feel better. I didn’t plan on liking you or loving you or leaving you. Every choice I made was not weighed out beforehand. Absolve yourself. You are not everything.

You are some things, though. You are train seats now, and the way the sun slants in through the window. You are my maman’s Bible, the nice one she puts in the sitting room and reads from on holidays. You are the dog tags I still wear, because sometimes I worry you won’t recognize me, especially now that I have a copy of Kipling. It's a terrible book. You are that copy of Kipling.

I wouldn’t have left if I knew you’d still be here. Fuck, I miss you. I’d never say it, but I miss you so much.

_2_

Sometimes I feel guilty. I hate that you make me feel like this. The only way I can deal with it is knowing that you feel guilty, too, and every bastard out there that came back feels guilty, too. I have nothing to apologize for, but I want to say “sorry” anyway, which is the sort of stupid thing you make me do.

I’m sorry for blood, the blood in your veins and mine and the blood that seeped into the earth and the blood that dried rusty on uniforms. I’m sorry that blood is hot enough to burn and slick enough to make everything slip out of reach. I’m sorry that the rain doesn’t wash it away. I’m sorry that we were covered in it. 

I’m sorry that you were too stupid to stay stateside, too insistent on getting fucked up. I’m sorry that fucked up is an inevitability and I’m sorry you only got to see me fucked up. I wasn’t like this before, I don’t think. I don’t remember, if I’m being honest, but if I pretend that there was a point in time that neither of us were fucked up, it makes this all easier. 

I’m sorry that I’ll only kiss you when the weather gets cold, when my feet are numb and I can’t feel my lips. Until then you’ll have to wade through hot, sticky air. I’m sorry that you have to, but it’s really not that bad. I’ve done it all my life and somehow you’re still there on the other side of the river, feet sinking into the muddy bank and calling out for me. I’m sorry that words come out of my hands and not my mouth and that my words will never reach you.

I’m sorry that it’ll never get cold and that I barely know what cold feels like. I’m sorry that I’ll never kiss you. (That could be an apology, but it could also be self pity. I don’t know. I don’t care.)

_3_

Do you remember that night in Peking, when I was tipsy and your cheeks were flushed, and I dragged you into the alley and you almost kissed me? Do you remember why you did it? Do you remember why you didn’t?

_4_

It’s hot tonight. I can hear the mosquitoes and cicadas. I can’t sleep because it’s too noisy, which is bullshit because during the war I couldn’t sleep until I heard gunshots.

My sister’s getting married tomorrow, and I almost sent an invitation to you. She would have let me. She doesn’t know you and she barely knows you exist, she only knows that I mourn someone, but all the same she loves you. 

I can’t sleep because I don’t want to sleep. The dark hides everything. The dark hides the big gaping chasm of time since I last saw you. It’s getting bigger. I don’t look at the date anymore because sometimes I look at it and think _It can’t have been that long._

My sister’s getting married tomorrow, and she will say, “Til death do us part,” and I will think something along the lines of being buried in Okinawa dirt, or something else equally stupid, and then I will think about forever with you. I’ve burned that bridge, and someone else burned that bridge for me. I’ll think about the burns all over my body from all the bridges burned, and I’ll regret it, and I’ll drink champagne until I can’t see straight.

Tomorrow night I will lie here again, unable to sleep. I will be drunk. I will think about you.

_5_

You’re not the Bible. You’re the drawing my niece gave me. She drew the night and the moon and the stars. It’s not accurate but it’s a what-if. You’re the drawing my niece gave me, but only if you remember that night in Peking.

_6_

My guilty pleasure is sometimes I go out into the bayou and swim. The water is cool enough to distract from the heat, and it removes the stickiness of sweat. It’s easy enough to excuse so I go out into the bayou and swim, and the whole time I think of you. If you were here, I would jump in before you, disturb the fish and the smooth surface of the water, and I’d grin up at you before you grin back and jump in. We would swim and I’d probably dunk you under and you would splash me, and then after we calmed down from our play fighting, I’d take your hands and I’d lift them up out of the water. I’d pour water into them and watch it pool in your palms and drip through your fingers. I’d do this until I don’t see red, and by then you’d understand and you’d do it to me, too. Water would drip off your wet hair and your wet hands, and the words would be stuck in my throat and they would hurt, but that’s okay, because you’d be there next to me.

But you aren’t here, so when I go out and swim, I go to the deepest point in the river, and I go underwater, and I scream the words that get stuck in my throat. By screaming them, I tear them out prematurely, so I am left bleeding and raw. I don’t know what they see on the surface, but I imagine it’s just air bubbles and a faint trace of blood.

_7_

It gets easier to not think about you, but that makes it harder. Thinking about you used to be a splinter, then it became a thorn, then it became a knife. Soon thoughts of you will be rare, but they will be a gunshot wound. I am not used to this kind of symmetry. I fucking hate it.

When I think of you nowadays, I almost always think of dropping everything and running to Mobile. I don’t know if you’re still there. Maybe if you aren’t there it’s better, and then thoughts of you will ache and not hurt. If you are there, I might have to burn the city down while you fill up the gas, and then we’ll leave scuff marks as we make our escape. That shouldn’t be a happy ending but it is. It’s the sort of ending that scares the shit out of me.

I don’t want to go back and change things and I don’t want to go forward and change things. I want you here, beside me, even when you aren’t. I want Maman to cook for you before she dies and I want her to sit you down at the kitchen table while she gets a bandage for your scraped knees. I want you to be here always, to always have been here, and then the choices would have made themselves.

_8_

Love is like when I threw the book I stole from school into a fire pit and watched it burn. Love is like the sweat on my brow and the thump-thump-thump of my heart and the burning of my lungs when I’m running down the dirt tracks. Love isn’t like a glass of water, but it’s the dark patch of concrete you pour the water on if that dark patch could stay wet forever.

I don’t miss you anymore, because I’ve forgotten I ever had you. When I think of you now, I just want you so bad, and your name gets carved into my chest over and over and over. You are not the sunlight slanting in on the train because that’s a dream to me now, and you can’t be a dream, Gene, you can’t. I lived all my life knowing that it touched yours, and that’s not good enough but it has to be.

Say you’ll see me again. I’m at the point where the weather doesn’t have to be cold. I’d kiss you even if we were back on Okinawa. I’d kiss every inch of you. I’d kiss _I’m sorry_ and _I_ _love_ _you_ and the lost time into your skin, and then I’d breathe slowly, knowing the air is sweeter when you are there.

I’ll visit your grave if you visit mine. I’ll bury the flowers so they’re closer to you, and I’ll whisper this into the dirt so you’ll never be without it.


End file.
